Inkheart is a children’s book to suit adult readers in our post-9/11 world. Today we suspect that each day without a terrorist attack brings us one day closer to an attack. Prices for gasoline and home-heating fuels are impoverishing our lifestyles. We are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and threatening Iran and North Korea. And our elected officials are not leaders. No wonder JK Rowling and other writers of juvenile fantasy are so popular now, for their characters’ firm grasp of their duties in wars against pure evil, and our jealousy for their otherworldly abilities to control the world. So we avoid 20th century realism because it now seems like fantasy. Instead we confront our 21st century reality by immersing our selves in Harry Potter or Cornelia Funke, whose Inkheart is a classic fantasy that carries us away to a more than real world where we may defeat the sources of terror.

Journal Entry 2 by rtrac3y at Top Pot Wedgwood in Seattle, Washington USA on Sunday, October 23, 2005